Food, Science & the Human Body

Description It may be a well-worn saying, but scientific data backs it up: You are what you eat. And not only that: You are what your earliest ancestors ate. In short, the story of humanity is inextricably linked to the foods we eat. Award-winning professor Alyssa Crittenden, Ph.D., provides a research-based approach to the history and science of the human diet, taking you far beyond the supermarket and laboratory. Understand our current — and future — relationship with food by looking back in time to the roots of food and food culture, and its intersection with science.

• Class Preview
• Paleo Diets & the Ancestral Appetite
• Our Hunter-Gatherer Past
• Stones, Bones & Teeth
• Did Meat Eating Make Us Human?
• Insects: The Other White Meat
• Was the Stone Age Menu Mostly Vegetarian?
• Cooking & the Control of Fire
• The Neolithic Revolution
• The Changing Disease-Scape
• How Foods Spread Around the World
• The History of the Spice Trade
• How Sugar & Sale Shaped World History
• A Brief History of Bread
• The Science & Secrets of Chocolate
• Water: The Liquid of Life
• Beer, Mead & the Fun of Fermentation
• Humanity's Love of Wine
• Coffee: Love or Addiction?
• The Roots of Tea
• The Fizz on Soda
• Food as Ritual
• When People Eat Things That Aren't Food
• Food as Recreational Drugs
• Food as Medicine
• The Coevolution of Genes & Diet
• The Scoop on Poop
• The Gut Microbiome
• Brain Food
• You Are What Your Mother Ate
• Civilization: Diets & Diseases
• What the World Is Eating
• The Overnutrition Epidemic
• World Poverty & Undernutrition
• Should the World Eat Meat?
• Should We Be Powered by Plants?
• The Future of Food